The Left Independent ✊🏻✊🏼✊🏽✊🏾✊🏿𓅃

US nuclear attack on Iran would trigger war on ‘entirely different level’ A US nuclear attack on Iran would unleash a war of an entirely different magnitude, fundamentally changing the rules of engagement, an analyst has warned, saying Tehran would abandon conventional retaliation. Speaking to the Press TV website, Patricia Marins, an independent defense analyst based in Brazil, noted that Iran’s retaliation to a potential US nuclear strike will be different from its previous responses. “No one knows Iran's exact retaliation capability, but all the technicians involved in monitoring the Iranian program agree with the idea that Iran may have already developed a weapon," she said. "And at this point, I would say this is highly probable and that the idea of a nuclear attack on Iran could trigger a war on an entirely different level, fundamentally changing the rules of engagement of the conflict." The remarks came amid continued US and Israeli threats to attack Iran’s Kolang Mountain (Pickaxe Mountain) facility, an underground installation near the Natanz nuclear complex in central Iran that US President Donald Trump and his aides have repeatedly threatened to target. On November 1, Trump said Washington still had "one or two sites" to deal with in Iran, explicitly naming Kolang Mountain, and claimed the United States could strike it within minutes. He had previously threatened to hit the area "pretty soon, and very heavily." The facility is a heavily fortified underground complex, buried deep inside a mountain and protected by dense rock formations. The limitations of conventional bunker-busters and tactical nuclear weapons have made the site an exceptionally difficult target. Against this backdrop, Marins stressed that a nuclear attack would have consequences extending far beyond the destruction of the facility itself. “In the face of a nuclear attack, there is no way Iran would lean toward a conventional response as it has been doing,” she said. “A nuclear attack would have a much broader magnitude than what is speculated, as the effects would not be restricted to a single mountain. Iranian cities would be hit directly or indirectly, as would agriculture.” She added that there would be no way to deploy a subterranean nuclear device in such circumstances, adding that “the artifact would indeed have to be detonated practically on the surface of the lower regions of the mountain.” The analyst said Iran's response framework had already been established following the suspension of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections, which she described as the point at which the country became an "ambiguous power." She maintained that Iran's deterrence capability already existed, although its precise nature remained unknown. The risk, she warned, was that Washington and Tel Aviv might underestimate it, just as they had underestimated Iran's conventional military capabilities before they launched the aggression on February 28. “Iranian deterrence already exists. It remains to be seen whether it will be mistakenly ignored, just as its military capability was,” Marins said. Read more: global21.substack.com/p/us-n…